Forty per cent of social media users have bought a product after favouriting or sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest, according to a study by Vision Critical.

Study: Image courtesy of Vision Critical

Facebook was found to drive most users to purchase while the data showed, somewhat surprisingly, that customers were as likely to make the purchase in-store as online.

Vice-president of social media at Vision Critical told Forbes: “One of the more surprising findings in this whole research for me was to see how significant that in-store purchasing is. This is one of those really not intuitive findings.

“And just that recognition that you are not getting the whole story on social from tracking social to e-commerce conversions is a huge finding.

“If you are estimating the ROI on social by looking at social to web, you are missing roughly half your social-inspired purchasing.”

Get the magazine app

The Drum app brings you some of the world's best marketing and media news, analysis and creative insights. Already the UK and Europe's number one marketing platform, we are also now covering the USA and Asia.

Delivered every fortnight, The Drum Magazine distils the babble of marketing industry commentary and news into a single intelligible and intelligent package. And because of its size, it has the space to showcase creative at its best.